Note 104 — Chapter CX
P. Le Page (Peter Le Page) Renouf translation
The Pyramid Texts have the invocations (Unas, 597), “Hail to thee, Horus, in the domains of Horus; Hail to thee, Sutu, in the domains of Sutu; Hail to thee, Lion ( Ȧar), in the Garden of Aarru.”
Another derivation is suggested in the “Destruction of Mankind,” line 39, (as I read it) an augmented form of , ar, which does not mean pluck, as in Brugsch’s translation, but bind, fasten, twine, nectere, constringere, convolvere. This sense would explain the ancient determinatives , , and lead to still more interesting results. For the ancient word , ȧarerit, ‘a vine,’ has thus clearly the same etymological sense as our European word vine. “Vî-num ... attaches itself to vî-tis, vî-men, vî-tex, and—exactly like the Greek ϝοῖ-νος—to the Indo-Greek root vei, ‘to twine.’ So that vî-no means first ‘creeper,’ then ‘fruit of the creeper,’ finally ‘drink‘drink made from the fruit of the creeper’” (O. Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities, 324).
Philological speculation might make a further advance.
As ȧar, is to ār, so perhaps is ȧarru to āru. The first two groups are not phonetically identical, but they are certainly allied and have very much the same meaning; the last has, with some probability, been identified with the Vine-branch, and that, in conjunction with the text (see Zeitschr., 1878, p. 107, and the plate corresponding). “The Vine-plant is Osiris.” The Greeks, or some of them at least, identified Osiris with Dionysos (Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride, 34, 35). The god is sometimes (as in the papyrus of Nebseni) sitting in a naos under a vine, from which bunches of grapes are hanging.
